Finnish Refugee Council will begin change negotiations on 8 October as the organisation prepares for significant reductions in state funding, with up to 15 employees potentially facing dismissal and the duties of another six workers potentially changing.
The negotiations will involve 21 employees whose positions are dependent on grants from the Funding Centre for Social Welfare and Health Organisations, known as STEA, as well as staff whose work could be affected by planned organisational changes. According to the council, the possible measures include redundancies, changes to job descriptions, transfers to other positions and a wider reorganisation of work.
The process comes as Finland prepares to reduce state grants for social welfare and health organisations. The government has planned an €84 million reduction in funding next year, equivalent to roughly one-third of the grants awarded this year. The scale of the cuts has left several organisations dependent on STEA funding reassessing their staffing and operations.
The Finnish Refugee Council said the funding changes have made it necessary to adjust its activities. Executive director Annu Lehtinen said the organisation was facing difficult decisions because the funding was declining both rapidly and significantly. She also warned that the changes would have consequences not only for employees but for the people who rely on the council’s services.
The Finnish Refugee Council is Finland’s largest specialist organisation focused on forced migration and has worked with people forced to flee their homes for more than 60 years. Its work includes supporting refugees and other displaced people in Finland and abroad. The organisation said the purpose of the restructuring is to protect its ability to continue supporting people affected by forced migration despite the changing funding environment.
The council is expected to receive approximately €1.3 million in STEA grants in 2026. Helsingin Sanomat has reported that about 80 per cent of the organisation’s funding for its work in Finland comes from STEA grants, making changes to the state funding system particularly significant for its domestic operations.
The latest negotiations are not the first indication that the organisation has been preparing for a difficult funding situation. In June, Lehtinen warned that the council’s operations in Finland could face closure from the beginning of 2027 if proposed changes to STEA funding criteria went ahead.
Those concerns followed proposed funding criteria presented by Social Affairs and Health Minister Wille Rydman. The original criteria later came under legal scrutiny after Finland’s Chancellor of Justice raised concerns about them. The government subsequently changed its approach and decided that the grant criteria would be established through a government decree.
STEA has since continued work on the framework for future grants. In August, the agency acknowledged that organisations were facing difficulties in planning their operations and meeting employer obligations when they did not know in advance how their funding would change. STEA said organisation-specific funding decisions would become clearer as its grant proposal process progressed.
The funding uncertainty has already affected other organisations across Finland’s social welfare and civil society sector. SOSTE, the Finnish Federation for Social Affairs and Health, launched change negotiations in June after STEA announced tighter funding criteria for 2027. Other organisations have also announced staff reductions linked to reductions or uncertainty in STEA funding.
For the Finnish Refugee Council, the immediate focus is now on the negotiations beginning on 8 October. The announced measures are proposals at this stage, rather than final decisions on every position. The process will determine how the organisation adjusts its staffing and work as it responds to a substantially different funding situation.
The council has said that its goal is to ensure that its work supporting people affected by forced migration can continue as funding declines. The outcome of the negotiations will show how much of that work can be maintained and what changes will be required to keep the organisation operating under the new financial conditions.
